"Come on,
Rob, wake up. We have a search. A missing
nineteen year old man last seen between Reeds
Meadow and Red Tahquitz."

"Okay,
I'm awake now. Where are we going to meet?"

"Camp
Maranatha in Idyllwild. A helicopter has already
been authorized. Landells Aviation will have the
bird at Maranatha by 7:00 a.m. to deploy teams
and do air search."

"Great. I
should be there at about 6:45 a.m. You know I
have fifty-five miles of mountain road between me
and Camp Maranatha."

"Well,
get moving and we'll see you there. Hopefully,
we'll wrap this one up in a few hours."

"Okay
Kevin. Good-bye."

I hung up the
telephone and loaded my SAR (Search and Rescue)
gear into my car. As I got underway it did not
occur to me that what had the appearance of a
routine search in a plateau like area would
become a thirty-six hour search with a regional
callout.

As I arrived
at Camp Maranatha a good turn out of RMRU was
present at the base camp. Many had remained in
Idyllwild overnight, following the traditional
July RMRU Bar-B-Que at the Mellor's cabin. They
had intended to go sport rock climbing but plans
were now changed.

Information on
the lost subject was limited. His name was David
Vague, nineteen years of age, from Oceanside. He
had been camping with a group from his church for
a couple of days. While the group was rock
climbing at Red Tahquitz, David wandered away
from the group, reportedly in a non-social mood.
He was last seen at about 4:30 p.m. on Saturday
walking towards Reeds Meadow.

As the
helicopter flew in at Camp Maranatha teams were
ready for deployment. Teams were placed to search
the Caramba area, Reeds Meadow to Caramba, Red
Tahquitz to Caramba, Skunk Cabbage Meadow to
Willow Creek, Laws Camp, Humber Park to Reeds
Meadow, and upper Tahquitz Canyon. Many hours of
hiking to assignments were saved by use of the
helicopter to deploy people. Searchers on the
ground were very important as the forest area
hampered aerial search. The weather was good, to
the advantage of both the lost man and searchers.
Everybody was at their field assignment by 8:30
a.m.

It already had
been over fifteen hours since David had been last
seen by friends. When the friends had returned to
their camp site Saturday night and David wasn't
there they did a hasty search of their own before
one of the group leaders hiked out to call for
help. The Riverside Sheriff's Office (RSO)
alerted the RMRU at about 5:00 a.m. and a call
out followed. David was described as about 5'7'
wearing glasses, and clothed in black jeans and a
blue T-shirt with a Ghostbusters logo. He had
left all of his gear and food at the group camp
site.

The last team
boarded the helicopter as spotters for the aerial
search. The ground searchers scoured their
assigned areas, frequently called David's name
out, and interviewed campers and hikers in the
area. The helicopter concentrated on Tahquitz
Canyon and Andreas Canyon and occasionally moved
ground teams to new assignments. Tracking was
difficult due to the poor description of David's
shoe, the great amount of tracks from other
hikers, and ground cover that included rock and a
thick carpet of pine needles.

As the day
wore on no positive leads were found. Base camp
personnel inter-viewed friends and relatives of
David, looking for information which might be
helpful in locating David. Eventually, it was
determined that the RMRU could use some
assistance. A call out of the California Region
of the Mountain Rescue Association was made. The
search was about to expand.

JOSAR (Joshua Tree Search and
Rescue), a volunteer group associated with the
National Park Service at Joshua Tree National
Monument, arrived just before sundown. Their men
were placed at key sites for the night. They lit
lanterns to light the way to help for David. By
Monday morning SAR team searchers from San Dimas,
China Lake, Sierra Madre, JOSAR and CARDA (Calif.
Rescue Dog Assoc.; had joined RMRU on the scene.
Don Landells was flying his jet Ranger III
helicopter and our other SAR helicopter friends
from El Toro Marine Corps base, were flying
search as well. The search had been in progress
for over twenty-four hours without turning up a
sign of David. We became concerned that he was
injured or for some reason was unable to come out
into the open to be found, or to signal to a
helicopter. Searchers continued to comb the
search area.

The night had
been warm, hopefully helping David to avoid
hypothermia, and Monday was overcast, hopefully
helping David to avoid dehydration. There was
plenty of water flowing in the streams. Hopefully
David was finding and staying near water.

Monday began
to wear on, as Sunday had. What to do next? On
searches like this it must be lonesome to be an
operations leader.

2:30 p.m.
Monday. The radio crackles. "RMRU base to
all field units, the subject has been
found." The radio continued on that the
subject was in Palm Springs, that teams should
now hike to trail heads or helispots. The search
was over, almost forty-eight hours after David
had become lost.

David was
tired and hungry. He had not eaten in two days,
as he journeyed farther and farther from his camp
site, down the treacherous Tahquitz Canyon. After
David had decided he was lost, at about 6:30 M.
on Saturday, he had come across a deer trail that
led him to a small ridge looking over the lights
of Palm Springs city. David said it looked close,
but he soon learned the deception of
"close" in the mountains.